I'm looking for a nice color laser printer with scanner that I can pick up for as cheap as possible either new or used... I've been into HP printers and have a black and white HP LaserJet right now but I'm needing color and a scanner now... I don't use color printing enough to justify having an inkjet printer as I only get like 5 pages outta an ink cartridge before it goes dry from no use... What do you guys suggest? I've been searching around but don't know what to buy

I run an Epson Workforce 645 with a CISS system that I bought about 4 years ago for 60$. You refill the ink about every 2 years and I do some heavy printing(250pg/week?). It is just great, no problems running out of ink or clearing heads and no more 108$ trips to OfficeMax or where ever for 3 drops of ink. Find an inkjet that you can buy a CISS for it and get it.

For a laser printer: HP Color LaserJet Pro M254dw. I knew someone who had the older revision of this printer and I used it a few times. Fabulous printer. Quality was great on it and it was fast.

Thinkpad4by3 wrote:I run an Epson Workforce 645 with a CISS system that I bought about 4 years ago for 60$. You refill the ink about every 2 years and I do some heavy printing(250pg/week?). It is just great, no problems running out of ink or clearing heads and no more 108$ trips to OfficeMax or where ever for 3 drops of ink. Find an inkjet that you can buy a CISS for it and get it.

For a laser printer: HP Color LaserJet Pro M254dw. I knew someone who had the older revision of this printer and I used it a few times. Fabulous printer. Quality was great on it and it was fast.

Nope. I have 4 bottles of ink that I have had for a few years when I refilled them 2 years ago and didn't use the whole thing. They are still fine. Printer ink cartridges keep so little ink in sponges and those sponges dry up. There is enough ink in the tubes that it won't dry up. It also won't flow back down, there is enough gravitational pressure to keep the ink in the printer.

I've had an HP LaserJet 200 Color MFP for a couple of years. Works great. Takes a few seconds to warm up and is a little bit noisy (compared to an inkjet) but it's been fast and reliable. Like you, I had an inkjet (HP Business Inkjet 1100d) but with only occasional use, the ink would dry up before the cartridge would be anywhere close to being empty. Yes, the laser cartridges are on the expensive side but they do last until they are empty.

Being an MFP, the built-in scanner can handle single sheets or a small stack that's automatically fed in. You can set up the printer with multiple computer destinations on your network so that you can "scan to folder". Output can be set to .JPG or .PDF at varying resolutions. There's even a way to do remote printing by emailing your document to your printer. I don't use the FAX so I can't say anything about that function. It does accept USB flash drives but not any kind of memory card (e.g., SD, Compact Flash, etc.). There's a small touchscreen that controls the entire machine.

The only negative (in my book) is that it's not an automatic duplex machine. However, you can still do a manual duplex by printing every odd page and then putting the stack back in the input tray to print the even pages. It takes up about the same amount of desk space as the 1100d but you probably can find some printers that are a bit smaller.